1. Do any of the things that give additional battle points in regular play (such as
beating high level characters with low level ones, pillz left after KO etc) affect theElo rating? Put in another way - does anything except winning the match matter?

2. What's up with courage? I was under the impression that it is only supposed to
kick in during the very first round of a match, however, I was playing a match in the
danger zone and in the _second_ round the opponent played a card with Power 5,
Courage 3 and I responded with a Power 6 card. We each used one pill and there
were no other modifiers present, but still I lost the round.
So courage works for the first two rounds or what?

1.When i was playing this game last year(no danger room)...people,i mean elo players waste all pillz at the end of the round...they dont keep pillz cause randomness is at hand...The elo points...all i can say is the higher value you challenge,the more points you can get...

If I understand the ruling for courage correctly, courage will activate on the turn when your opponent plays first. Example:
Round 1: You play your card first, your opponent's courage WON'T activate.
Round 2: Your opponent plays his card first and THEN you respond, your opponent's courage WILL activate.
Round 3: Same with Round 1
Round 4: Same with Round 2

Your opponent plays Amy (Courage 3) Power 3 (+3 due to courage = 6), 3 pillz. Attack=18
You play Gary, Power 5, 3 pillz as well thinking that this is the second round and courage won't activate. Attack= 15

Winner: Amy, because courage activated since Amy was played first, giving her 6 power instead of 3. THAT's how courage works.

Hope that clarifies things. Courage doesn't just activate on Round 1... That would be silly.

My understanding of courage is that it applies when you play your card before your opponent. So if your opponent played a courage card and you responded, his courage would apply. It'd depends on who plays the first card in the round, not the entire match.

But yah, I learned it the hard way too that Courage works when it is played first in 1 of the 4 fights during a match. For some reason, when I read the Courage rules the first time, I thought too it would only work during fight 1 in a match and I too thought that it didn't matter if the card is played first or second in that first fight.

But actually that doesn't make much sense when you think about it. I had to lose an important match in the Danger Zone to learn how Courage really works. After that I saw cards like Elya in a different light.

Maybe the Courage rule on the rules page should be rewritten to better explain how it works because it seems like a lot of people have trouble understanding it.